CHAPTER XIX 



ERNESTINA 



I WONDER how she got her name ? I can imagine 

 that her father was hoping for a son, and had 

 promised some fond uncle to call the boy Ernest ; he 

 did the best he could by calling his daughter Ernes- 

 tina. 



That is the best explanation that I can suggest, 

 and very likely it is the right one. But however it 

 came about, Ernestina is her name, and it is quite 

 a popular name among the Eskimos. They always 

 like a name if they can pronounce it easily ; that is 

 one reason why they like Bible names. Mostly they 

 take Bible names because they are names out of 

 God's Book a witness, as it were, to their change 

 from heathenism to the worship of the true God ; 

 but they like the short Bible names for the very 

 good and very Eskimo reason that they are easy to 

 say and to remember. They alter them just enough 

 to make them sound pleasant and musical to Eskimo 

 ears. It does not seem to suit their ears to have a 

 name ending in a consonant ; so they either take 

 away the last letter, and talk of Abraha, Isa, and 

 Jako, or they put on a vowel at the end, and say 

 Davide and Samuele, They have a queer weakness 

 for names with a fe in them in fact, nearly every 

 Eskimo name has some fe's in it somewhere. 



When we started a printing press at the hospital 



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